


Trash and Treasure

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-20 01:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18982183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Dorian hates the gifts Trevelyan gives him.





	Trash and Treasure

“I brought you something.”

Dorian put his book down. Trevelyan had just returned from the Storm Coast and was still wearing his travel cloak, his boots caked with grey mud. He was holding an enormous conch shell.

“I sincerely hope that whatever was inside that is dead,” said Dorian.

“Don’t worry, it's vacant.” Trevelyan set it down on the desk. It made a sound like a heavy dinner plate.

“And what am I supposed to do with this?” said Dorian.

“I brought it for you.”

“So you’ve said, so I’ll also repeat myself: what am I supposed to do with this?”

Trevelyan's smile was like a knife. It was the smile he used on his enemies before he set them on fire, or on Dorian when he was being especially annoying. 

“Put it on your desk?” Trevelyan said. “A shelf, perhaps?”

“To remind me the sea exists? I’ll have you know I grew up in Qarinas. I’ve had my fill of seashells.”

“I was thinking of you when I found it,” said Trevelyan. “You can't appreciate that?”

“Yes, dead snails are obviously what I’ve been longing for this entire time.” Dorian opened his book. “Do be a dear and toss it out for me. And try a bottle of wine next time.”

Trevelyan swept the shell off the desk and left without another word. Dorian rolled his eyes. And people called him dramatic.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, the shell was not the last of such gifts. 

Trevelyan brought Dorian a sparrow's nest, and the delicate husks of cicadas left on tree trunks. He brought Dorian the scaled rattle from the tail of a venomous snake, and the skull of a river pike with all its sharp little teeth intact. He brought flat river stones and owl feathers and dripping honeycomb and the shell of a ghost white crab. All the detritus of the world, he brought to Dorian, as if it might please him to be given the little pieces of trash he picked up on the side of the road. Once, Dorian had stood with his hands on his hips, glaring as Trevelyan waded knee-deep in a freezing river to bring up a clam with a pearl inside.

“I’d prefer it set in a broach, thank you,” said Dorian, before swanning off. He sulked in camp until Trevelyan agreed to take him to the clothing stalls in the Val Royeaux market.

"I don't understand your taste," said Trevelyan, curling his nose slightly at a row of perfume bottles. "You would rather have this frivolousness?"

"Frivolous, he calls it!" said Dorian. "What was it you brought me the last time? Petrified wood?" 

"It's very rare." 

"Rubbish."

"It's not rubbish, it's-" Trevelyan closed his eyes, clearly begging for patience. "When I was in Ostwick Circle, did you know that I used to bribe the Templars to bring me pieces of the outside world?”

Dorian looked away from him. He did not like hearing about Ostwick Circle. He did not like thinking about that dreadful tower on its desolate rock, lonely amidst the crashing waves. He certainly did not like to recall the stories Trevelyan had told him about the experiments conducted on mages there, and what Templars did to little mage boys when they got bored.

“Hence why you should treat yourself, and me, to actual luxury. Wine, robes, jewelry.” Dorian picked up a scarf from a nearby stall. “Pure seasilk, and perfect to wear to a gala next month.”

Trevelyan folded his arms. “You have a dozen of those.”

“And having a dozen more won’t do me harm.”

“You tire of them after wearing them once.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Dorian turned over the scarf idly, then tossed it back in the pile. “Honestly, for being of gentle birth, you have the sensibility of a peasant.”

“I lived in the woods for fifteen years.”

Dorian shuddered. He picked up a black cashmere cravat, stroking it with his thumb. “Buy this for me.”

“Buy it yourself.”

“No, I want _you_ to buy it for me.” Dorian shoved it into his hands. “Take it back to Skyhold, put it in a box lined with red velvet, wrap it with a gold lamé bow, and order a box of candied dates to go with it. Then, you’ll get your thank you.”

“I was under the impression that it was the thought that counts.”

“Which thought?”

Trevelyan gave him a long, searching look. Dorian did not like that look. It was one of his hawkish, Inquisitor looks, where he openly sized up an opponent. 

“Very well,” said Trevelyan at last, and paid the ten silver for the cravat. Dorian wore it for half a day, before tossing it into his travel bag and forgetting about it. He found it later, back at Skyhold, and turned the cashmere over and over in his hands. It was hard to say why he had wanted it in the first place.

 

* * *

 

Dorian considered the cabinet of curiosities he had accumulated in his room. His “trash pile,” he’d taken to calling it, which, depending on the day, either made Trevelyan laugh or grow sullen.

It was a wide cabinet of dark oak, and it was covered in Trevelyan’s gifts. An entire shelf was given to feathers, and another to interesting rocks. There was a stoat skull and a handful of dragonscales, and a varghest’s long, curving fang. There was entire snake skin, and, disgustingly, the toenail of a giant. All the little gifts his magpie had brought him, and which would all be thrown away as soon as Dorian set sail from the Inquisition.

_I was thinking of you when I found it._

Dorian had had lovers give him gifts before. Flowers, jewelry, expensive colognes. It had given him deep pleasure to be basked in exorbitant wealth before he inevitably tossed the gifts out, usually right before the passion ended. In Tevinter, if a man had seen fit to give him a blue robin’s egg as a gift, he would have laughed in his face.

Now, he thought of Trevelyan traipsing around Thedas, picking up every interesting little piece of the natural world he came across and thinking, _I’ll show this to Dorian later. Dorian will think this is fascinating._ Trevelyan, who had spent seven years of his life in a dark pit of a cell, and now flitted through the forests of the world like a sparrow, alive and aware of its wonders. He was thinking of Dorian. He was always thinking of him.

 

* * *

 

“I brought you something.”

Trevelyan looked up from his paperwork. He was smoking his pipe by the campfire, a sheaf of missives on his knee. The Hissing Wastes had burned his bald head as red as a lobster.

Dorian sat down beside him and offered him a small stone. Trevelyan took it and examined it. His dark brows lowered further.

“This is a….fossil,” he said, surprised.

“A fish fossil,” said Dorian. “Apparently, they’re quite common in deserts because all this used to be an ocean, or so they say.” Dorian had some objections to such a theory, but it was hardly his area of expertise.

The little black stone in Trevelyan’s hand was smooth and flat, with the delicate bones of a fish imprinted on one side.

“Where did you find it?” Trevelyan put his paperwork aside. He held the stone in both hands, turning it.

“Down by the oasis,” said Dorian. “I spent most of the morning stooped over, and my back is terribly tense. You’ll have to see to that, won’t you?”

Trevelyan looked up. The pipe poked from one corner of his mouth. “Are you starting a collection?”

“Oh, hardly. I already have enough in my room, thanks,” said Dorian, and then, softer, “I wanted you to have it.”

“For me?”

“You’re more than a little obsessed with dead things. I also had a notion that you could carry the wretched thing around in your pocket. That way, whenever you fiddle with it, you'll think of me, and imagine fiddling with me instead.”

Trevelyan smiled. It was such a sloppy, sweet smile that Dorian had to laugh. Trevelyan pulled the pipe from his mouth and caught Dorian by the neck between his warm, gloved hands. He dragged him forth and kissed him in full view of the camp scouts eating breakfast across the fire.

“Thank you,” he said, still keeping his gloved hands on Dorian’s neck. “It’s the most thoughtful gift anyone’s ever given me.”

Dorian felt a pang at that, but he hid it by tugging Trevelyan forward by the collar and giving him one more kiss. “Don’t thank me yet. You’re buying me new boots in Val Royeaux on the way home.”

 


End file.
